The use of VIPP in a key teaching-learning tool developed by WHO’s Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development.
A key priority of the Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development is to strengthen the capacity of health workers to respond to their adolescent patients effectively and with sensitivity. The aim is not to create a cadre of specialists. It is to build the capacity of trained and registered health workers who are already providing preventive and curative clinical services to children, adolescents and adults.
The objectives of the capacity building efforts are to help the health worker find answers to these questions:
• Why should I be concerned about adolescents ?
• What do I need to know & do differently if the patient who walks into my clinic is 16, not 6 or 36?
• What could I do outside my clinic, to help other influential people in my community understand & respond to the needs of adolescents?
A package of teaching-learning tools that aim to add, and add value to existing WHO training materials and guidelines have been developed. A key tool is the Orientation Programme on Adolescent Health for Health Care Providers (OP).
The OP aims to draw upon the experiences of participants to:
• help them see adolescents in a way that they have not done before;
• help them view things from an adolescents’ perspective;
• motivate them to them to do something meaningful for adolescents;
• help them think through how to deal with adolescents in their everyday work.
The OP uses a mix of teaching-learning methods, that match the teaching-learning objectives. These include:
• Mini lectures
• Structured discussion
• Analysis of case studies
• Problem solving
• Role playing
• Stimulating reflection on personal & professional experiences.
The VIPP methodology provides the basis for much of the plenary and group work sessions. It ensures that the teaching and learning is truly participative. The Module on Substance Use in Adolescents, for example, illustrates how participatory methods grounded in VIPP have been interwoven with more conventional methods (such as mini lectures). This is crucial because in a typical OP workshop, involves cadres of health workers (e.g. doctors and nurses); and health workers of different levels of seniority (e.g. senior and junior nurses). Adolescents are also involved as active participants.
